New programmers often get their start in programming on homework problems, and questions about those homework problems often lead to the same programmers getting their start here on Stack Overflow. Often, homework problems get a comment or other link to that element of the FAQ. For many new users, this might be their first exposure to Meta.

Because a new user's first question is often of lower quality, more experienced users who attempt to answer those questions often get downvoted (whether that's appropriate or not) and rudely treated for doing so (new users are also often unware of the code of conduct) so there's a general disincentive for answering such questions. Occasional positive experiences for helping new users might lead to new users getting more help and being more likely to stick around and become positive contributing members of the community.

On that FAQ question's accepted community-wiki answer, I made a good-faith edit adding a point about responding to helpful answers, primarily about how to mark an answer as accepted, which is something I think we're trying to encourage here. This also helps later users who come along with a similar question.

Another user removed both that edit and a point that had been standing for years, from the original answer, and wasn't part of my change at all, which had previously been removed and promptly restored. The explanation in comments focused on that user's view that nothing in that FAQ answer should repeat content that could be found elsewhere on Meta nor make points that weren't strict requirements. The user who wrote the original answer promptly moved to re-include both points.

In response to the critic's point about requirements, I then edited to add a point where formal requirements do exist. This was again rolled back by the same user and again restored by the user who'd written the original answer. Further discussion in the comments, unfortunately now all gone, again focused on whether or not the FAQ question answer could contain information that can be found elsewhere on meta.

A later reset restoring those edits as well as that point from the original version which had stood for years but been removed a third time without discussion was greeted with a hard message about not creating new rules and having to start a separate discussion first, ignoring the fact that I'd been resetting to what had been standing for years. The rollback also ignored that comments had been forcefully making the opposite point about how the community wiki FAQ answer should NOT contain points from elsewhere on meta; inclusion elsewhere was grounds for removing them from that FAQ answer.

Personally, I maintain my view from the comments on that answer that the FAQ answer should summarize the points from meta and Help Center that are most relevant to the subset of questions that FAQ concerns. However, others clearly disagree. Depending on who's chastising me for getting it wrong at any given moment, the answer should contain ONLY content from elsewhere on meta or NO content from elsewhere on meta.

This meta question is intended to open discussion on that topic more specifically. Should Meta FAQ answers serve to summarize content or introduce new users, or be specifically focused to exclude content that can be found elsewhere on meta?

Going further, as my critics did, does there need to be an exclusive focus of content ONLY found elsewhere on meta, such that rule-changing removal from a community wiki cannot be restored without a new discussion on the topic, and the long-standing FAQ answer cannot itself serve as a source?

Refusing to provide criticism or other appropriate negative feedback when a user engages in problematic behavior doesn't make them more likely to engage in positive behavior in the future, it makes them more likely to continue to engage in those same negative behaviors because they got positive feedback for doing those harmful actions in the past. When you tell someone it's appropriate to do something harmful, and refuse to tell them it's harmful, they going to continue doing it, and not improve.
– ServyNov 7 '18 at 19:37

Is a new user accepting a helpful answer that solved their question harmful? Is answering a new user's question harmful? Those should probably be different meta discussions.
– WBTNov 8 '18 at 14:20

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Demanding new users accept answers to their questions is harmful. If they want to accept an answer that they felt was helpful, they can. But badgering them to do so is not. Answering low quality questions regardless of who asks them, is generally harmful, yes. That's what makes them low quality questions. If it was helpful to answer them they wouldn't be low quality questions. I agree they should be different meta discussions, and yet you filled the first half of your post with this discussion. I would suggest removing, particularly if you don't want to discuss it.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:24

It wasn't a demand for every case, it was carefully qualified to only if there was a particularly helpful response. Also, the consensus here seems to disagree with you on that point about if it's harmful to provide good answers to bad questions. I linked to that discussion and another one like it above.
– WBTNov 8 '18 at 14:27

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That doesn't dispute the point in the slightest. It says that you should vote on answers based on their usefulness. Answers to low quality questions generally aren't useful, and so, according to that answer, you should generally be downvoting answers to bad questions.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:28

@Servy I think you're missing the main point there. The question is "Is it okay to downvote answers to bad questions?" and the summary answer is "no." You're saying the question being bad is reason to downvote answers to it and that seems to directly contradict the main spirit of what's behind that link.
– WBTNov 8 '18 at 14:31

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It says you should vote on answers based on how useful they are. It doesn't say you shouldn't downvote answers to bad questions. You shouldn't downvote answers because they're posted to bad questions, you should downvote them because they aren't useful, and answers posted to bad questions are very rarely useful.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:32

You're still judging the answer by the quality of the question there. I still think that goes against the spirit of that discussion, but you should be putting your points on that discussion, not this one.
– WBTNov 8 '18 at 14:34

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You're the one who brought up the issue, not me. If you don't want to discuss it, then don't bring it up in your question. The fact remains that the quality of a question impacts the usefulness of an answer. An answer's value cannot be determined in isolation. A useful solution to a problem the question isn't asking about isn't a useful answer. An answer is judged based on whether it is a good answer to the question asked, so when the question is unclear, off topic, improperly scoped, etc. then it absolutely impacts how useful the answers are or can be.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:39

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The linked post says that answers should be voted on based on how useful they are. You've said that answers to low quality questions are useful and should be upvoted. It doesn't support your assertion, and so I've disputed it. I'm not disputing the answer you linked to which states that answers should be voted on based on how useful they are. I think it's a poor answer (in that it's poorly explained, perhaps even to the point of being misleading, not that it's technically wrong), but others have already said as much in comments to that post and in other answers.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:58

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You have specifically said that you think it's a good thing for people to be answering bad questions. It is, at best, very rarely useful, and very often harmful, making it an action that is, in general, harmful. You have stated the opposite, saying that it's generally helpful. You didn't say, "it's not impossible to post good answers to bad questions".
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 15:09

But that's not what you did. You brought up a point, and then linked to something that says something very different. Again, if you don't want to discuss that point remove it from your question.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 15:54

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Answers to low quality questions are almost always going to be not useful (because if answering them were useful the questions wouldn't be low quality questions), and so they're going to merit downvotes, according to that answer.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 16:00

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I'm with @Servy on this one; you're distinctly linking to an answer you think strengthens your argument, and you're being called on your misinterpretation of it. If you don't want to argue that point, then don't make that argument?
– fbueckertNov 8 '18 at 16:06

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Discussion of how answer acceptance works is entirely off topic in a question about how to ask and answer homework questions. Even if the guidance was good, which I don't think that it is, at best it's simply off topic.

People aren't telling you that it's never appropriate for any post to ever include information found in some other meta post, they're just telling you that this information doesn't belong in this post. Repeating things that are relevant to different questions in the answers to each of those questions can be fine. Repeating answers to one question in the answers to other questions that have nothing to do with it is not.

The change was also not done "with no discussion". In fact, there was so much discussion (many dozens of comments on the subject) a moderator told you that you should have that discussion in a meta post on that issue, rather than on the FAQ post itself, because there was simply too much discussion for that venue. Numerous different people provided you with numerous explanations as to why the changes you were seeing to that post were being made. You may not have liked them, but you can't claim that no one explained to you why the changes that took place were made.

People aren't telling you that it's never appropriate for any post to ever include information found in some other meta post You may have missed the comments, which are now gone. Yes, I was being told that as the decision rule. Also, the discussion wasn't about the "label questions as homework" point, which had nothing to do with the edit I was trying to make. I was not trying to disturb a rule that had stood for years, whether I agree or not. To be chastised for doing so seemed a bit harsh.
– WBTNov 8 '18 at 14:17

@WBT I, frankly, don't believe you. I read a good amount of the comments, although admittedly not all of them. I can't really prove you wrong unless a moderator posts the deleted comments, but between the comments that I did see, and my experiences with the people you were talking to, I highly doubt anyone told you that. You must have misinterpreted what they were saying, or missed some qualifications.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:19

@WBT That wasn't "a rule that has stood for years". The FAQ was out of date with the community's consensus for years, and it has been off topic for the entirety of the time it was in that post. Someone noticed and went to fix it. You kept reverting it, despite it not being appropriate advice (both in general, and also, because it's off topic in that post). It's not just always okay to revert any change anyone makes to an FAQ by claiming, "I was trying to not disturb a rule that has stood for years".
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:21

There should have been a separate discussion about that then, as indicated by the person who took it out with the point that a separate discussion was needed. Why do you say it was out of date with the consensus, if there wasn't discussion? It was in the FAQ like that and the post got all those upvotes with that rule in there.
– WBTNov 8 '18 at 14:24

@WBT There have been lots of discussions on those topics. The changes made were well in line with current community consensus, as has been discussed numerous times in various meta discussions. The discussion doesn't need to happen in the comments of that FAQ.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:27

I agree that point would best be a separate meta discussion. Can you link to discussions that show the consensus directly contradicting the FAQ point on that topic?
– WBTNov 8 '18 at 14:28

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@WBT I'm not really interested in doing your research for you. (And honestly the fact that it's entirely off topic is grounds enough to remove it, so I'm not really interested in spending time debating it further.) If you were concerned about it you could have asked the editors for that in comments. That would have been appropriate, rather than just constantly rolling it back.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:31

Whether or not a person needs to label a question as being a homework question seems entirely on-topic for a post about how to ask and answer homework questions. I wasn't trying to discuss that point at all, I was focused on something different, and wanted to keep any needed discussion on that. If someone wanted to remove the other point that had been there for years and someone had unsuccessfully attempted removal before, I think a separate meta discussion would have been appropriate, but nobody wanted to start one.
– WBTNov 8 '18 at 14:33

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@WBT If you weren't trying to dispute that point, then why did you keep adding it back in every time it was changed? As for labeling posts as homework, just through some of the hundreds of posts about the homework tag (which is precisely about whether homework questions should be labeled as such). You can see that there has been a long consensus that whether or not a question is related to a homework problem is irrelevant to the question. They should simply ask their question, and there's no need to ask someone if it's homework related or not.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:37

I was trying to leave the portion of the post that had stood for years and was irrelevant to the point I was trying to make alone, as it had been. I didn't think anybody else should make such a significant change to the rule without a discussion on the point and if there had been discussion on the point it should have been linked to from there, as others requested happen with the link to the discussion about use of a homework tag. Where can I see that there has been a long consensus that differs from what's stood for a long time in the SO FAQ specifically about homework questions?
– WBTNov 8 '18 at 14:40

@WBT You can just do a search on "Homework" on meta to see that consensus. Someone doesn't need to make a meta discussion before every single edit to an FAQ page. There's only a need for a meta discussion if there's disagreement. You can't just go around rolling back every single edit to every single FAQ until someone posts a discussion to ask permission. If you think their change is wrong, you can either discuss it in comments, or if it's not quickly resolved, start a discussion on it. But continuing to revert a change that you don't even disagree with is frankly bordering on abuse.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:43

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@WBT You seem to be under the impression that the FAQ is prescriptive of what the rules are. It's not. It's descriptive. Something being in an FAQ doesn't make it a rule, the FAQs are there to summarize the rules and guidelines that the community has. If you honestly think that all of those changes that you made are accurate representations of the communities rules and guidelines, then don't hide behind, "I just didn't want them changed", and justify your reasons for feeling they belong there.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:49

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@WBT I apologize, I had forgotten some of the relevant facts of changes to that post and as a result I've accepted statements of yours as fact when I should have disputed them long ago.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 14:54

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@WBT The sad reality is that the FAQs are not always particularly well maintained. Lots of people have discussions on topics and don't always update the FAQs based on those discussions. There sadly are, fairly often, incorrect information sitting in FAQs for long periods of time. Someone noticed one, and fixed it. You, and others, continued to roll it back despite the fact that whether homework questions need to be marked as such has been discussed to death and the consensus came to be that homework questions should be treated as any other type of question, and not marked as such.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 15:02

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@WBT My answer is about the relevance of the topic. That's literally the opening sentence of the answer. I specifically say that repetition is fine, if it's on topic in both places, but that it's not on topic in both places here. That's the whole second paragraph.
– ServyNov 8 '18 at 15:15